Windows—Want to Sort Files by Type and Date Modified

Recently, I need to retire a Windows 10 laptop and migrate its contents to a new one. Then the below question was asked in my mind:

Can I do a 2-tiered sort of files: sort by type then by Date modified?

In this article, we will demonstrate how to achieve that.

Figure 1.  File Explorer with View tab selected in Windows 10 

Sorting Files and Folders

"Sorting files and folders" reorders them in File Explorer based on the criteria you prefer. There are over 300 criteria available, and you can apply whichever you prefer. 

Open a File Explorer (see Figure 1)

1. To open File Explorer, click on the File Explorer icon located in the taskbar.
2. Alternatively, you can open File Explorer by clicking on the Start button and then clicking on File Explorer.

By default, in Windows 10, your files and folders are sorted in Ascending order by Name - or alphabetically - except for the Downloads folder, which is sorted in Descending order by Date modified - newest downloads are displayed on top.

Figure 2.  Sort by Date modified in Descending order

How to Cleanup Old Files in a Folder?

To figure out which file needs to be kept and which not during a laptop migration, it will be nice to sort files first by Type and then by Date modified.

Here is how you can achieve that in Windows 10:

1. Click View, and select Details
2. Click Group by, and select Type (default: Ascending) 
3. Click Sort by, and select Date modified (default: Descending) 
• You can also click on Date modified column header to change its sort order (note that it's a toggle).

Figure 3.  Final result (2-tiered sort of files: sort by type and then by Date modified)